What Should I Plant in my Garden that is Hard to Kill?

Hello:

I am a beginner gardener and I have decided to beautify a pre-existing garden in my front yard. I live in Oakland and the winters are mild and summers not too hot. I believe my yard faces north. My garden is about 15 feet x 6 with a picket fence around it. Currently, my garden contains a rosemary plant, four sycamore trees, and a rose bush. I recently got all the weeds out and added fertilizer. I have just started watering as well. I was thinking of some hardy flowers that will not die and could climb up my white picket fence. I recently planted morning glories in an attempt to climb up the sycamore trees but so far nothing has come up. It has been about 3 weeks. In addition, I have noticed that the neighborhood cats have been using my garden as a litter box. Will this harm my soil?

Please help as I am a complete beginner at this. Any hardy flower suggesting would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

How much sun does your yard get? You're lucky that you have a really great climate for growing most things so there'll be lots of choices, but some plants need a lot of sun and others like shade. I'm not sure how you could have 4 sycamore trees in a 15x6 foot space, but if they are somehow squeezed in there I'm guessing you have really dense shade? That will probably not make the morning glories very happy even if they do come up. Unfortunately I don't have much shade so I'm not good with shady suggestions except for things like hydrangeas or azaleas and rhododendrons, although they need at least some morning sun or else they won't bloom well.

Hostas and bleeding hearts come to mind. Impatiens. these are all shade plants that I use.

I can't help much with shade garden suggestions either, but I had the cat potty problem. Cat urine is not good for your soil. You say "cats" so I assume it is enough to affect the soil adversly. I scattered a load of gumballs from a neighbors tree around the area they used. They stopped right away. It worked much better than the sprays that are made for this. The gumballs are not going to break down for a very long time, so keep that in mind before you use my suggestion.

I doubt that the morning glories will grow up your trees for a couple of reasons. The soil is likely not the best for morning glories under the tree. It needs to be porous and moist - not usually what you find under trees. The light will be reduced by the tree and morning glories will need sun to flower. Also, morning glory seeds have a very tough outer coating. If you didn't soak them or nick the seeds, they will take a long time to germinate. Without proper light and water, they may never grow. A better vine might be glory bower, although I don't think under the trees would be a good spot. It is one of the few vines that will flower without at least a few hours of direct sun each day. The picket fence would be a good choice for these. If you get full sun around your fence, any flowering vine will work.

If you get so much shade that you are restricted to the handful of shade loving plants that flower, you might try plants with colorful foliage. Croton, coleus, persian shield, perilla, euonymous, freckleface, fancy leaf geraniums, and rex begonia are just a few of the possibilities. I like to include these in my garden for the times that only a few flowers are blooming. They provide constant color with no deadheading. Every year the selection for these plants gets better. Coleus alone has a variety in every color flowers come in.

You mention that you are just starting out in gardening. One thing that took me a long to time to catch on to is less is sometimes more. I lacked (and still do, at times) the discipline to keep my garden on the simple side. I would like a plant or flower and stuck in somewhere in my garden. Individually, they are beautiful, but if you start to mix too many colors your garden can get chaotic. I like bright warm colors and an overall tropical look, so I removed pastels, pinks, light purples and whites. It still leaves me with hundreds of choices and now there seems to be a flow to the garden I didn't have before. It's also a good idea to repeat plants throughout your garden. Not every plant, of course, but a couple plants repeated, maybe three times, seems to work well. They don't have to be evenly spaced, but don't put them next to each other.

One other thing that has made an improvement in my garden is to vary plant height. If you don't have a plant that grows tall on it's own, you can train one up a plant support instead of letting it grow horizontally.

All that said, all gardens are pretty. It has to make you feel good when you look at it. These are just things that I think look better for my garden. The only other thing I will add is this. I used to think that you made a garden and that was that. Little did I know that it is an ever-changing thing. If you enjoy gardening, your garden is never "done". You are constantly rethinking, moving, adding and removing plants and "ornaments" and that is the greatest thing about it!

Chris